Drooling over the Obamas’ school lunches

Sasha and Malia are eating well at their new Washington D.C. private school, Sidwell Friends School. Their lunch menuincludes items such as tomato basil soup, organic spinach salads, baked tilapia and roasted veggie melts. Many of the options are organic and locally grown.

Compare that to HISD’s breakfast pizzas, popcorn chicken and steak fingers with gravy.

Considering all we know about the role nutrition plays in health and academic performance, some parents — and nutritionalists — are hoping that public schools look to the president’s choice as an example.

breakfast pizzas, popcorn chicken and steak fingers with gravy sounds pretty good to me since their 6th lunch break is only 15 minutes, so we brown bag it every day…

When I went to HISD back in the 60’s, we took our lunches in a brown sack to school because we couldn’t afford the $1.00 cost for a baked fish patty, green beans, a bread roll, apple slices and raw carrots and a half pint of milk. So in my bag I had…half a sliced apple, P&B sandwich, raw potato slices, a carrot and 5 cents for a milk. On Thursdays I could have a bologna sandwich

and a bananna or an orange we picked off our tree in the backyard.

Soft drinks were not sold in schools at that time.

Neither were snacks of any kind, and we all had mandatory P.E. afterwards. I never saw a fat person here until the great rust belt migration of 1971. All we heard was “you people eat like birds down heah, don’t you know what good food is? How abouts some pizza for lunch?”

Some school districts have made progress in providing fresh, healthy food in their cafeterias, but they have not done so farming the job out to ARA. I have heard the excuse that kids and teenagers will eat only junk food, but what we eat is really a habit. Sometimes ARA serves two vegetables–one swimming in salty butter and the other a few unappetizing raw carrots. If the only choice is a slice of pizza or raw carrots, its gonna be pizza. The cafeteria worker sometimes get blamed–a shame since they are not paid the full value of their labor–but the management plans the menu and delivers the food.

Its a shame too that this situation exists considering the great awareness our culture has now regarding nutrition and healthy food. This knowledge is old now, not new.

It’s wonderful that the First Kids are getting such a good education and their lunches are are so good. It would be great if every kid had parents like Barack and Michelle who worked hard to achieve the current level of success they enjoy so that they can provide their kids the best.

But should every kid at HISD be eating what they are using my tax dollars? No way. When I shop for myself at the grocery store, I never buy tilapia or organic anything for one simple reason. That stuff is just too expensive and there is plenty of other stuff that’s every bit as healthy and much cheaper that I can buy instead.

If parents want their kids to eat healthier, then do what Barack and Michelle did. Send your kid to a $30,000 a year school. Or, you know, buy them healthy food and send that to school with them.

I’m with David. As much as I’d love to be eating healthier, I’m trying to live on my VA disability and my Social Security (and supporting my ex who wasn’t in the workforce long enough to make a decent contribution into her SSA). Nor am I a cook, so I buy the best inexpensive food than I can mix together.

And when I was still in elementary and high school, I brownbagged, and about the only difference between what I had and what Jose had was that my mother put in swiss cheese slices rather than raw potato slices.

I do remember trading food with others quite often. Sometimes we could even sell something, like a mandarin orange or pears from the backyard trees, or watermelons we grew. Our Pecan tree provided good snacks, as well as the turnips. However, everyone in the neighborhood was about the same economic status in 1964…about 5 bucks an hour…I think our rent for our two bedroom 900 sq foot house was about $75 a month. I never saw a twinkie or pizza until I was about 10, and 90 percent of our food was grown by us or our extended family from Baytown to Katy. We always had rice, beans, native fruits and veggies. I don’t ever remember being hungry. The best thing in life then was going to the “picture show” (drive-in movies) on Friday nite for a buck and we brought our own popcorn…without butter. I didn’t know we were poor then, but we sure were healthy. I’ve never been hospitalized. Seems strange it really wasn’t that long ago, and I’m still not fat or have any health problems at the young age of 51. Maybe it was the food? Even today, I don’t eat corn fructose products or cakes or pies or even candy..it makes me sick. To this day I still eat thinly sliced raw potatoes or carrots or apples and pecans for snacks, an so does my 15 year old son. He never gets sick either.

The issue isn’t that schools should be serving Red cabbage Gazpacho–whatever that is–or tilapia, but the quality and nutriontal value has not improved for thirty years–I think it may have gotten worse in some schools–and our society has grown much richer these three decades. David, I disagree that what you pay in taxes is “your taxes,” it is the membership fee for belonging to this society that is invested in the future. When we were young, we received free public education and our college education was subsidized, so now we give back. (Would you rather our collective resources be invested in good nutrition, encouraging positive habits, or in Iraq?) Moreover, some school districts have paid more attention to the issue, and I mean public ones, not just schools serving the affluent. Its not the role of public schools, educationally or in other services, to reinforce the inequalities already out there.

Not really, Dad was in the Army and stationed in Germany, so cheese was really, really inexpensive. I like crunchies like carrots to munch on, so I’ll have to try raw potato slices. Thanks for the suggestion!

“Not really, Dad was in the Army and stationed in Germany, so cheese was really, really inexpensive. I like crunchies like carrots to munch on, so I’ll have to try raw potato slices. Thanks for the suggestion!” Posted by: Ranger Jim

My dad was stationed in Germany, Army as well in 1951. Small world, huh? Anyway, the best way to have cold raw potato snacks is wash it, slice it very very thin, and add a small amount of salt and pepper on each slice. Don’t skin it though, that’s where the nutrients are and gives it kick.

Very crunchy and filling, and lots of potassium. I don’t eat a whole potato…I cut it in half. It’s plenty. For some reason, I sleep well from that too and feel great the next day. Cheers.

I am glad that JesseAlred was able to get “Iraq” into the real reason our kids go to the most (not best) expensive school system in the world and end up on the lower end of the educated list. Perhaps if we lower our expectations a little more and give everyone a BA or BS at government expense, better (organic, of course) food will be served.

wallydawg, I am glad you have brought this up. A few years ago I read a wonderful study of how our students scored compared to those in other countries. It said:, our top-third students scored as well or better than any other country; our next one-third scored in the middle of other nations; and our botton one-third scored similar to students from impoverished countries. The problem isn’t our public schools but our class structure–we have too great a diversity of wealth among families, and this is reflected in student performance. Nonetheless, we should provide nutritious meals to kids.